Overview
EN ISO 22329:2025 (ISO 22329:2021) - Security and resilience - Emergency management - Guidelines for the use of social media in emergencies - provides practical guidance for integrating social media into emergency management and crisis communication. It explains how organizations and the public can use social media before, during and after incidents, and how social platforms can support emergency services, situational awareness and community resilience.
Key topics
This standard is a guidance document rather than a prescriptive regulation. Major technical topics covered include:
- Understanding social media
- Definitions (e.g., social media, inaccurate information, purposefully misleading information)
- Roles of social platforms in many-to-many communication
- Utilizing social media
- Implementation considerations, monitoring, dissemination and interaction strategies
- Planning
- Development of policies, risk assessment, setting social media objectives and strategy
- Resource planning and digital tool selection
- Implementation
- Operational guidance for monitoring feeds, publishing actionable messages, and two‑way interaction with the public
- Guidance for citizen-facing information and behaviour
- Review and improvement
- Processes for review, quality assessment and continual improvement of social media use
- Supporting material (Annexes)
- Types of platforms and channels, quality assessment and verification methods, practical examples and citizens’ guidance
Normative reference: ISO 22300 (Security and resilience - Vocabulary).
Practical applications
EN ISO 22329:2025 is intended to help organizations use social media effectively and responsibly during all phases of an incident:
- Improve situational awareness by monitoring public reports and trending content.
- Enhance crisis communication through timely, verifiable dissemination of instructions and safety information.
- Manage and counter inaccurate or misleading information by establishing verification and response practices.
- Support community resilience by enabling citizen interaction and mutual aid coordination.
- Inform procurement and configuration of monitoring and publishing tools through recommended considerations.
Who should use this standard
- Emergency management agencies and civil protection authorities
- Public information and crisis communication teams
- Local authorities, health services and first responders
- NGOs involved in humanitarian response or community support
- IT, social media and resilience planners responsible for policies, monitoring and digital tools
Related standards
- ISO 22300 (vocabulary) - referenced for terms and definitions.
Keywords: EN ISO 22329:2025, ISO 22329, social media in emergencies, emergency management, crisis communication, misinformation, situational awareness, social media guidelines.
